


to him who will try

by Beth Winter (BethWinter)



Category: Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu | Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Genre: Gen, Preslash if you squint, rabid fanboying of Alexander the Great, they're sixteen at this point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 03:52:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16925961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethWinter/pseuds/Beth%20Winter
Summary: At sixteen, Reinhard stumbles on a book about someone else who set out to change the world





	to him who will try

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rainedparade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainedparade/gifts).



**792 UC, summer. Odin.**

The rich purple binding of the book was identical to others in Count von Lahrisch's secret collection. Only the pages inside were different, cheap paper covered with careful handwriting in greying graphite. Easy to destroy, Reinhard deduced, and time-consuming to create. Leaving no electronic traces at all.

He considered destroying the book himself, now that its contents were committed to his memory. Yet it would be just as easy to cut the covers and deface the spine and frontispiece, leaving it with Annerose until it was safe to have it rebound. Preserving something that lasted nearly five centuries in an empire that condemned it was - pleasing, to the impulsive ten-year-old part of him that was willing to do anything and everything to hurt the Goldenbaums, as hard and as fast as possible.

At sixteen, he liked to think his plans were a little smarter.

Reinhard put the book down when the footsteps approached, but did not hide it. He knew Kircheis's gait, even when changed by carrying a breakfast tray.

He allowed himself a flash of rueful guilt at just how often those breakfast trays saved him from morning hunger. At least in the officers' quarters adjoining the Ministry of Military Affairs, Kircheis could just call on a servant rather than smuggle two breakfasts out of the canteen.

Reinhard got the coffee table cleared a moment before Kircheis put the tray down. A china teapot was another Odin upgrade to their morning meal, and he gratefully poured strong dark tea.

"Good morning, Kircheis," he ventured once he'd managed his first teacup and poured another.

Nursing his own cup, Kircheis threw him a sidelong look. "You're wearing yesterday's clothes. All the books on the floor are arranged in reverse order than they were last night. I thought you said Count von Lahrisch's library wasn't very interesting."

Reinhard reached for a piece of bread and ham. "Most of it is just pornography. This one is an exception. It's history, about Alexander of Macedon."

"The Greek who conquered half a continent around -3000UC?"

He could always count on Kircheis's memory, as good as his own. "The half-page he got in the Academy's history course didn't do him justice. The tactics - he only had soldiers on horses and on foot, with spear and swords, but his campaigns were inspired."

"You usually end up tearing apart any tactics book you read."

"It's not the tactics." Reinhard touched the title page, where a long-dead hand drew a portrait copied from a coin. "It's - he surrounded himself with like men, people who could lead almost as well as he could, people who knew him well enough to guess what his orders would be even if he wasn't there himself to give them. In a dozen years, he conquered half the world he knew."

"How old was he when he started?"

"Nineteen. Nineteen when his father died and he became king."

"And army leader?" Kircheis guessed. "Let's say that's fleet admiral. You've got two years and eight months to beat him."

"I need to do it faster." Reinhard poured another round of tea for both of them. "I have to have the men by then. Alexander started with a childhood friend, too. Hephaestion."

Kircheis's blue eyes seemed guarded. "Did they remain friends?"

"Until the end, until Hephaestion died." Reinhard grinned. "Apparently Hephaestion was better looking, so much that one conquered queen took him for the king. Alexander just laughed and said: 'He too is Alexander'. He mourned him like another part of himself, and died soon after."

"I'll try not to do that."

"Please." Reinhard flashed a grin. "Annerose would kill me."

"Worse, she'd guilt you into going on. She wouldn't have to say a word."

They raised their cups in a mute salute to Reinhard's kind, awesomely formidable sister.

Kircheis threw a pastry at Reinhard's head, ducking the glare he got in return. "What will you look for in your officers? Apart from a willingness to tell you you're not allowed to die?"

"That's reserved for you." Reinhard nibbled absently on the pastry. "Talent. Loyalty. Initiative. Careers stopped or slowed because of all the ways the Empire is rotten to the core."

"Genetic defectives? Deviants?"

"I don't care as long as they shoot straight and think before carrying out orders." He frowned. "Commoners, most of all. Anyone who survives the Academy knows well enough to hide the first two."

"Ambition?"

"Some of it." He glanced at the book again. "Not too much of it. After Alexander's death, his only child was still in the womb. His commanders tore his empire into kingdoms of their own. His mother kept some of it together, his wife and son, but only for a time. I don't think he ever thought ahead beyond conquest, towards maintaining what he created. I have to do better than that."

"Empires fall and rise with emperors."

Reinhard snorted. "Don't remind me. I'm still trying to avoid that. Or come up with a constitutional order that does not depend so much on the personality of my son."

"You'd have to actually talk to a girl first."

This time, a pastry flew the other way. "Wait till I make fleet admiral."

"Maybe some enterprising lady will creep up on you when you're sleeping."

It felt good to laugh like boys, like they used to do before the Academy. They set to tidying the ruins of their breakfast, evenly dividing the remaining spoils.

Kircheis put the book about Alexander aside carefully, apart from the rest of the secret collection that was heading to either pulping or preservation in the secret archives of the Ministry. "Why did von Lahrisch have a military book? The man didn't have two thoughts in his head that weren't about fashion."

Reinhard ducked his head. "That would be because of the - thorough analysis of the relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion. Apparently it's been a subject of wild speculation for millennia. There is an extensive bibliography of novels and treatises that I suspect survive only in similar collections, or in the Alliance."

Kircheis gave the book another look. "How thorough?"

"Diagrams. Give me that, I'll leave it with Annerose until things are over."

Reinhard removed the covers with a pocket knife as Kircheis took the breakfast tray into the corridor. There would be time, when things were over. For now, there was only his goal, only the downfall of the society that allowed so much injustice.

When things were over, he wanted the words 'Reinhard and Kircheis' to be said together for four thousand years.


End file.
